A fellow food blogger friend of mine, Daniela of Food Recipes HQ, said she really enjoyed seeing my travel photos–her food photography & travel photographs are also beautiful, so this is a huge compliment–& a fellow photo journal blogger buddy, Cat of Silent White, was inspired by my last Ma Belle Vie post, & made her own. I figured it was best to follow up my Mushroom Mapo Tofu recipe with another Ma Belle Vie post. For those of you who haven’t seen this before, “Ma Belle Vie” is a category of posts cataloguing my day in photographs from when I wake up until I go to bed. I forgot to take photos of our night, but I can assure you, Josh & I take dental hygiene seriously – rest assured, we did brush our teeth before sleeping, despite the lack of photographs to prove it.

Click the first photograph & use the arrows on the center left or right to navigate through our day. These photos were taken at the end of summer in August when I flew with Josh to help him settle into Florida. I’ll be back with a Vietnamese noodle recipe, wait & see!

If you’ve never heard of this delicious Sichuan dish before, now you have & you’ve seen a picture of it. Of course my rendition of it errs on the traditional meat & tofu dish, but this is still an amazing Chinese dish, which pretty much is a party in your mouth. Probably might even make you sweat a little if you can’t handle the heat. This would not be the greatest recipe to try if you’re in, oh I don’t know, California or Florida right now–the states that completely avoided the Polar Vortex because they defy the laws of Seasons–but if you’re in any of the other 48 states with the exception of parts of Texas, this dish is right up your alley. Autumn is happening & it’s slowly getting chillier with each passing week, so if you’re one of the strange individuals who doesn’t like soup–& apparently I know about at least 3 of you–mapo tofu is a nice solution. This dish is the perfect embodiment of Sichuan cuisine with its usage of their spicy peppercorns, reminiscent to the heatwave that is hammering a drought stricken California or the ever humid Florida. So, eat up this recipe & experience the heat before venturing out to the chilly autumn wind. Even if you’re not a fan of tofu, the sauce is so distinctive in flavor that the tofu won’t even bother you one bit. Not a fan of mushrooms? We’ve already talked about this.

Let’s welcome August with a noteworthy appetizer recipe & some other foodie pictures! I’m completely behind on editing & uploading all the pictures I have on my SD cards, so one of these days there’ll just be a post with a bunch of pictures & guess what? YOU’RE GONNA ENJOY IT…maybe. So, let’s talk about my new recipe that I obnoxiously named “Sensational”. Look, I can feel your eyeballs rolling out of your orbital fossa, but bear with me – the catchier the title, the more likely someone will check out the recipe. What makes this recipe so sensational? KEWPIE MAYO, duh, obvi, like srsly how is dat even a q?? In all seriousness doe, the combination of Kewpie mayonnaise, sesame oil, masago, & imitation crabmeat really bakes well atop New Zealand green mussels. The umami is strong with this one & I think that if you love shellfish, this is a great recipe for you to try out. It’s actually not too expensive to make given that you have sesame oil, ponzu sauce, sesame seeds, & Kewpie already. Who would have that already? People who love to make Japanese food, gosh. If you love Japanese food, invest in those ingredients; you’ll find that they are used in many recipes.

As I sit here listening to Broods’s self-titled debut EP, I feel a sense of calm that I haven’t felt since I was in the Bahamas with my family & Josh. I’ve been so high strung since I’ve gotten back with application deadlines looming, attempting to gather together my thoughts to compose several profound & moving personal statements formatted correctly to each school’s guidelines that I often forget to just breathe. There is so much I’d like to write to explain myself & why I want to pursue medicine, but I’m often confined to 2500 characters to 450 words, thus it’s absolutely imperative that I make every word count. Years of blogging have taught me that most people stop reading if your blog exceeds 500 words so I’ve always attempted to keep my thoughts short. Just taking a gander at my giveaway post, you can see that most people didn’t care to read what I wrote because they were simply there for the chance to win free loot.

Without further ado, here are some pictures & a video from my week vacation in Freeport, Grand Bahama. It was overcast everyday while we were there so the weather wasn’t optimal for us to do any fun water sports, but with such a beautiful view, it’s difficult to have a bad time!

Although I’m not the type of girl who wants flowers & designer gifts ever, Josh surprised me with my favorite flowers, homemade dinner, & dessert for Valentine’s Day. The flowers have already been thrown out by now, but the half-eaten macarons are still sitting in my fridge. I should probably finish those before they start to harbor a safe haven for mold. Last weekend would be one of the most delightful weekends I had in a while, but every weekend with @CupofJosh is like a spoonful of honey. He made me dinner for Valentine’s Day–we make each other dinner every weekend, he just got me dessert this time–we had a night out on the town for Bryan’s birthday, we got work done together the next day, & to end the weekend, we celebrated our first anniversary as a couple. Without trying to melt your eyeballs out with cheese, I’ll make this quick & to the point: my year with Josh has been nothing short of wonderful & if you asked me, I wouldn’t be able to tell you when the “honeymoon stage” ended because I still feel over the moon because of all the feeelzz for mah boothang. As is evident, my level of literacy diminishes when I have to express the feels.